A Dismantling of Diet Culture

As a future nutritionist, I find it impossible to encourage people to focus on health rather than their weight. We have been taught over and over again that skinny is healthy and fat is unhealthy. This comes from media and advertisements selling us weight loss supplements and teas and detox programs all to make us healthy and skinny. The message behind these advertisements is that we should be skinny and we should WANT to be skinny. This desire leads us to forget the role of food in our health and focus only on how it makes our bodies look. I have seen too many people subscribe to this notion that being thin is the ultimate body goal as opposed to being energized, preventing chronic illness and overall feeling good throughout your day. This is problematic because it causes people to buy into “diet” products that are low-fat, sugar-free, 100% naurtal, etc. These products are advertised to promote weight loss when in reality they are almost across the board even more detrimental to our health due to additives and extra processing. The issue is then exacerbated when people comment on an individual's weight and tell them they look great because they lost weight when in reality, they may be unhappy and unhealthy. (Stop commenting on people’s weight!!!)

I talk about this because in order to do my job of improving an individual's nutrition, I need to simultaneously be undoing the lifelong damage that the media and the food advertising companies have done on our body images. This stuff is not talked about enough and that leads to shame and a feeling of loneliness. This is my introduction to the topic of body image but I’m pledging right now to make it more of a priority in my work. Above I’m sharing a video of my story with a scale in hopes to encourage people to tell their body image stories and eliminate the shame that goes along with it! Love yourself and your bodies people!! They do amazing things for us everyday.